Watershed Symposium 2018

KEYNOTE  Planning for an Uncertain Future: Insight from Colorado

Water has long shaped the West, but the future is unlikely to look like the past. How do we proactively plan to address the challenges we anticipate, and those we cannot foresee? Colorado's experience as a leader in drought mitigation and response, as well as planning for uncertainty will provide insight and lessons learned.

Design, Construction and Maintenance for Permanent Erosion Control

I was never taught this! Preventing erosion from concentrated flows long after a project has ended is key to achieving water quality goals and providing for public safety. But permanent erosion control is rarely taught or designed and systems are failing. This presentation provide clear understanding of what to install and what to never install.

Full Abstract
This presentation will cover design, construction and maintenance of permanent erosion control stormwater facilities. Stormsewer facilities that will be addressed include stormsewer outlets, riprap and filter, articulated block and revetment mats, non-photodegrading turf reinforcement materials (TRMs), energy dissipaters, and trash racks. The targeted audience includes: seasoned, midlevel and entry level engineers, engineering technicians; architects; water resource managers; permitting and development review personnel for city, county, regional, state and federal agencies; and stormwater system maintenance supervisors, managers, and crew members. It includes a significant amount of photo representation or easy visualization and understanding of what works and what doesn't work. There will be numerous material and design considerations the audience will be able to immediately take back and use.

Water Quality Data Collection, Management & Sharing in GIS

Learn how to streamline your water quality sampling effort from start to finish using GIS. This presentation will show you how to configure your geodatabase, build sample collection survey’s, and host the data for public consumption. Improving your sampling workflow will help you better leverage your data and illustrate the story it tells.

Full Abstract
Organizations conducting a regular water quality sampling regimen can accumulate lots of data quickly. Managing this sampling regimen can be extremely time-consuming. An effective data management solution saves time and improves data quality by coordinating sampling effort, processing, and reporting procedures. The Salt Lake County Watershed Planning and Restoration program has completely overhauled their sampling initiative by leveraging their existing ESRI enterprise geodatabase and augmenting data collection/review using a Survey123 mobile collection application. Storing sample data in the geodatabase allows data sharing services to be published and hosted on websites making them available to the public. Previously sample data was collected on paper forms and then reentered into a standalone Access database. Access databases have limited functionality compared to today’s data models and data requests frequently required manual query and exports into different formats. This new GIS-based solution has eliminated dual entry and the published data services put all the data at the end user’s fingertips in a variety of formats.

The poster session is a forum for presenters from around the world to highlight programs and to share successful ideas with colleagues by presenting a research study, a practical problem-solving effort, an innovative program, and more. Poster presentations provide other conference participants an opportunity to quickly and easily become acquainted with a variety of topics.

Check the POSTERS tab to learn more about the presenters!

EBPR: A Solution to Nutrient Removal and Environmental Protection

Exponential growth in population and agricultural use of phosphorus (P) nutrient rich fertilizers has drastically reduced this limited resource. Excess P in surface waters from anthropogenic activities has been linked to eutrophication and harmful algae blooms. Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) is an economically viable solution to remedy these emerging environmental concerns.

Full Abstract
With the turn of 19th century agricultural use of nutrient rich fertilizer to meet population growth and food consumption demand has drastically increased. Anthropogenic activities have contaminated surface water with excess nutrients through storm water runoff and other point source contributions. These excess nutrients have been linked to environmental derogation in the form of eutrophication and harmful algae blooms. In response researchers and legislators have studied possible solutions to remediating these emerging contaminates in an economical and efficient way. On January 1, 2020 Utah will act with Rule R317-1-3.3, a technology-based limit of total phosphorus effluents (TBPEL). Effluent discharge concentrations from wastewater treatment facilities will be regulated to less than or equal to the annual mean of 1 mg/L. Since the late 1970s enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) reactors have operated a series of anoxic/anaerobic/aerobic environmental conditions all over the world with great nutrient removal success. Phosphorus is removed in the wasted biomass of phosphorus accumulating organisms (PAOs) who consume soluble phosphorus and use an energy resource for proliferation. PAOs compete with denitrifying bacteria, glycogen accumulating organisms (GAOs) and other heterotrophic organisms for volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and other carbon resource. Additional carbon sources can be generated from the fermentation of primary settled sludge (PS) and or recycled activation sludge (RAS) to combat resource limitations. Funded by Central Valley Water Reclamation Facility (CVWRF) the University of Utah is operating a bench top EPBR reactor with fermentation. Microbial diversity is being monitored for PAOs, with particularly attention on Tetrasphera. Tetrasphera ability to accumulate phosphorus while also carrying out glycogen fermentation and denitrification makes Tetrasphera a desirable microorganism for EBPR. EBPR with fermentation is an economical and effective solution to nutrient removal for industrial and municipal wastewater discharges. The removal of P from our wastewater effluent discharges is of vital importance, because P is a limited resource that is being depleted at exponential rates. Scientist have estimated that apatite ores, the natural phosphorus deposit, will only endure current consumption rates for the next 50-130 years. The P rich biomass from the EBPR removal process can in turn be used as fertilizer, which will considerably conserve P resources since 82% of the mined phosphorus is used for agriculture.

Retrofitting Stormwater Ponds To Improve Water Quality & Flood Control

Why build additional treatment and flood control basins at significant cost, when simple, inexpensive modifications to existing basins may achieve your water quality, flood control, and reuse goals. Often simple and relatively inexpensive modifications can be employed to achieve improved water quality treatment efficiency and added flood control.

Full Abstract
This presentation will describe ways to maintain and modify existing stormwater treatment basins and traditional flood control basins for improved water quality, added flood detention and stormwater reuse. Often simple and relatively inexpensive modifications can be employed to achieve water quality, flood control and reuse goals especially where available land is scarce or expensive. The presentation will include key design parameters and considerations for various features so designers will be able to use the information provided the next day.Targeted audience would include city and county public works directors, engineers, planners, water resource managers, and permit reviewers; consulting engineers; water management agencies; state and federal agencies; MS4 regulators; researchers and students.

Cyberinfrastructure for Improving Real-Time Water Resources Management

This presentation will explore new forms of cyberinfrastructure for monitoring water resources, including autonomous robotic-sensor networks for real-time water flow and quality tracking in rivers and estuaries, wireless-sensor networks for monitoring the mountain water cycle, and machine learning algorithms to optimize sensor-network design

Full Abstract
Recent advances in low-cost and low-power sensing technologies, remote sensing, cloud computing, and machine learning present exciting opportunities to develop new resilient and adaptive civil-infrastructure systems for improving water-resources management. These systems can help to ensure the optimal use of constrained water resources, monitor aging infrastructure, adapt to infrastructure failures, and improve our scientific understanding of the environment. In this presentation, I will discuss research on new real-time sensor networks for monitoring water resources in mountains and river environments, which are key regions for storing and delivering water in the Salt Lake Valley and across the Western United States. Specific topics will include: (1) the development of an autonomous robotic sensor networks for real-time water flow and quality tracking in rivers and estuaries, (2) real-time wireless-sensor networks for monitoring the mountain water cycle, and (3) combining airborne remote sensing data and machine learning algorithms to optimize sensor-network design. I will also present and solicit feedback on future research, including the development of depth-profiling robots for the Great Salt Lake and Utah lake.